Susan Shirk on Public Reveal of Kim Jong Un's Wife
Hey, Isn't That... Kim Jong Un's Wife?
07/26/2012
Larisa Epatko,
PBS
Spotted: Smartly dressed woman on the arm of North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un, strolling through an amusement park and attending official events.
Not much was known about the 20-something-year-old Kim when he became supreme leader of the isolated and secretive country in 2011 after his father's death. So it took some by surprise when state television confirmed just this week that his wife was singer Ri Sol Ju, though the two reportedly wed in 2009.
That Ri is seen in public at all is a change from the previous regime. "It's very new, a very new way of doing things, and it humanizes [Kim]," said Susan Shirk, a professor of China and Pacific relations at the University of California, San Diego. "I think he's trying to be a different kind of leader."
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Susan Shirk is the chair of the 21st Century China Program and Ho Miu Lam Professor of China and Pacific Relations at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at UC San Diego. She also is director emeritus of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and chair of the IGCC International Advisory Board.
In 1993, she founded, and continues to lead, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
